XIX
IN THESE
two final lectures I shall try to deal with as many as
possible of the questions before us. In a preliminary outline, such as
has been offered in this series, the main purpose is to learn more
accurately, in the way that can be given by Spiritual Science, the
path taken within the human organism by substances external to man,
and also their counter-effects. If we have a complete bird's eye view,
as it were, of the way in which any substance operates, we have at the
same time an indication of its therapeutic value, and can use our own
judgment. To use individual judgment is far better than to keep to
prescriptions which say that is for this and the other for that. On
this occasion, I shall again start from something apparently remote,
in order to reach something very near to us all. Among the written
questions put to me, one continually reappears, and it must, of
course, be of interest to you all — the question of heredity in
general. Both in judging healthy — or at least relatively healthy —
persons and the sick, it plays an extremely important part.
In the materialistic biology of the present day this heredity is only
studied in a very abstract manner. Certainly it is not studied in such
a way as to provide much practical use in life. But if we give it
earnest and careful study, we shall find it remarkable (at least to
the exoteric student, whereas the esoterist knows it as an obvious
law) that all that mankind needs to know about the world and its
relations, reveals itself somewhere in an externally visible form.
There is always something that reveals externally those secret but —
for mankind — most effective forces of nature. And if we investigate
heredity we must keep that very specially in mind for on the other
hand all the factors associated with heredity are continually confused
and concealed by illusions, so that sound judgment becomes most
difficult. If a judgment is formed on a question of heredity, there
are always other phenomena to which it does not apply. For indeed, the
facts of heredity are wrapped in the most powerful illusions which
spring from the character of its law. But the very nature of this law
implies that its regularity does not always become obvious. The
manifestations of heredity follow a pattern of law, but one very hard
to regulate. Just as the horizontal position of the arms of a balance
depends on a special law, but is upset by adding to the weight of one
side or the other, so that the law is difficult to regulate — so is
it also, we may say, with the operation of heredity. It is a similar
to that of the horizontal tendency of the scales; but it is sealed
through a wide range of varying manifestations. This is due to the fact
that always in heredity different elements, male and female, play
their parts. The male always transmits what man owes to earthly
existence, what he owes to earth-forces; whereas the female organism
is more apt to transmit the cosmic influence from beyond the earth. We
might express this difference as follows. Earth makes continual
demands on the man; the earth organises his forces. Earth is the cause
from which the male sexuality originates. On woman the heavens, as it
were, make continual demands; they cause her shape, and prevail in all
the internal processes of her organisation. This contrast may remind
you of something already touched upon in these discussions. Now there
follows this result; suppose a female being comes into existence
through conception, and develops; it is inclined to become more and
more attuned to the extra-terrestrial processes, to be taken up as it
were by the heavens. If a male being develops it becomes more and more
inclined to be taken hold of by the earth. Thus heavens and earth
actually co-operate, for neither acts exclusively nor on one sex
alone, but in the female the arm of the scale rises towards the
heavens and in the male it inclines to the terrestrial. It is a strict
law but is subject to variation, and hence arises the following
result. In woman, the organism includes internal tendencies which wage
permanent contest with the terrestrial elements. But the strange
thing is that this only holds good with regard to her own individual
organism, and not in the terms of life and the seed. This contest
between cosmic and telluric forces is restricted in woman to all the
processes apart from the formation of the ovule, that is to say from
the organs which serve the functions of reproduction. Thus woman
continually withdraws her organisation from the inherent forces of
reproduction; the organs surrounding the reproductive tract are
continually kept back. And we might say that there is a tendency to
transmit through the male what is contained in the reproductive forces
and can therefore be inherited. In woman there is a tendency to
withdraw from this heredity — and concurrently in her own oogenous
powers there is the stronger tendency of inheritance.
So we must ask how the human community can counteract the destructive
forces of heredity? For we know, do we not, that heredity finds no
barrier between the spiritual and the physical. For instance, in
families subject to mental disorders, these may alternate in
successive generations with diabetes; there is thus a metamorphosis
which swings to and fro. Therefore it is a matter of immense urgency
to find out how to shield mankind from the ravages of heredity. The
chief preventative measure is first and foremost to do everything to
preserve and improve the health of women, for in that case, the
extra-telluric influence is drawn more actively into our earth
process, and those processes which work continuously to transmit the
harmful influences of heredity through the germ, can be combatted
through the maternal organism. Thus a community which gives thought
and care to the health of their women, wages war against the harmful
influence which springs from the earth-forces in heredity, by means of
an appeal to the forces proceeding from outside the earth, and acting
as a counterbalance. For these cosmic celestial forces have, as it
were, their earthly accumulator solely in the organism of a woman.
This is most important, and holds good for all forces of telluric and
cosmic origin; it is universally true. It becomes conspicuously
evident in the case of hæmophiliacs, of so-called “bleeders.” It would
be well if there were less vague talk about heredity, and more study
where concrete facts point unmistakably to its operation. Observe this
as shown among “bleeders.” You will find a striking phenomenon, known
to you all, and illustrating what I have just pointed out. In the
family descent among hæmophiliacs bleeding itself only appears in
males, but the transmission of the illness occurs only through
females. A woman whose father was a hæmophiliac, though she does not
exhibit the disease herself, is liable to bequeath it to her male
descendants. She gets
it because she is part of the family. The males, however, become
bleeders. But if these marry women free from hæmophiliac descent, the
disease is not transmitted.
If you analyse the aforesaid facts, you will find a striking concrete
expression of my statements, and indeed the facts of hæmophilia are
far clearer proofs than all the recent experiments by Weismann, etc.,
of what happens in heredity. And they are also important for the
general judgment of the human bodily organisation; this organisation
must be to some degree estimated in the light of that which is apt to
influence it.
What is the actual basis of hæmophilia? This can in fact be detected
by superficial consideration. The blood does not coagulate properly,
so that the slightest external scratch or prick may cause the
hæmophiliac to bleed to death; they may die from attacks of nose
bleeding, or the extraction of a tooth, for what would lead to
coagulation in other persons does not do so in the case of a
hæmophiliac. So the blood of these persons must possess some
constituent or quality, which counteracts the power of coagulation. If
this quality exists in too potent a degree, it is not neutralised by
the external forces which begin to work from outside when the blood
coagulates. For coagulation of the blood is caused by forces working
from outside. If the blood possesses a quality which does not allow
these external forces to prevail, there is an excessive tendency to
fluidity of the blood.
It is easy to detect that a strong tendency to excessive fluidity is
connected with the whole formation of the human ego. And not
superficially but deeply, and with that which manifests in the human
ego as will, not with that which manifests as “Ideation.” The
constitutional tendency to excessive fluidity in the human blood is
associated with all that either strengthens or debilitates the human
will. And there is a fine historical example which proves that certain
of nature's secrets are accessible to a proper interpretation. Both
history and science are aware of the Engadine case; you will probably
know it — the case of those two young girls of the Engadine district
who have furnished us with a light on some profound — and medically
helpful — aspects of human nature. Both of these young women came of
hæmophiliac stock, and both formed and kept the steadfast and
courageous resolution to refrain from marriage. So they have their
place in history as personal champions of the fight against
hereditary hæmophilia.
Of course we must lay stress on the real core of this case. It is
certainly not peculiar to all the girls in hæmophiliac families to
withdraw in this way from propagation. For such a course of action a
strong subjective will must be developed; just the kind of strong
subjective will that operates in the ego, and not in the astral body.
Such a peculiar will power must have distinguished both of those young
women. They must have both had something in their egos, in their power
of will, that was connected in some manner with the forces operative
in bleeders. If such forces are augmented in a conscious way, this
could be done more easily in such cases than in persons who are
non-bleeders. A just estimate of this interaction leads us to look
into the specific forces and properties of the blood and their
interplay with the extra-human world. And in studying those properties
of blood that are associated with the conscious will, we can learn
something of the general connection between the human will and the
forces external to man. Certain of these external forces have a
particular inner kinship with the forces of the human will, a kinship
based on the course of evolution for the very last to be separated out
in the natural realm, has been all that is connected with the
conscious will of mankind. That is the latest precipitation to emerge
in the realm of nature.
Let us now study something in external nature which is among the
creations by which nature framed mankind, and which shows by its
inherent qualities its association with that formative process of
humanity. A substance of that description has long been a subject of
study, and there are great difficulties in surveying the results
because it is hard to make the forces preserved by atavistic medicine
into the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries active still in the
intellectual modern man. The substance thus studied was antimony and
all that is linked with it. Antimony is a most remarkable substance;
it has attracted the most profound attention from all who have had
much to do with it, including the legendary Basilius Valentinus.
Certain attributes of this substance will reveal the peculiar manner
in which it is interwoven with the whole process of nature. Consider,
for example, what is perhaps the least of antimony's attributes: its
extraordinary affinity to other metals and other non-metallic
substances, so that it often appears in combination with other
substances, especially with sulphur compounds. Now we have already
touched on the specific operation of sulphur in this respect and
antimony tends to appear together with the sulphur compounds of other
substances. This inclination of antimony shows how it is interwoven in
the nature-process. Yet another quality is even more significant.
Whenever possible, it forms sheafs of needle-shaped crystals. That is,
its urge is along a straight line, outwards and away from the earth.
Whenever antimony collects longitudinally, we behold the lines along
which the forces of crystallisation are directed from outer space to
the earth. For the formative forces in crystallisation which generally
work in more regular patterns, produce in antimony the spear-shaped
and sheaflike structures. In this way antimony reveals how it is
inserted into the whole of nature. The characteristics of the smelting
process also indicate antimony as revealing — or betraying — the
forces of crystallisation. By means of the smelting process we can
obtain antimony in a delicately fibrous form.
Then there is this further quality: if antimony is exposed to
temperatures it can oxidize — burn in a peculiar manner. The white
smoke that forms from it reveals a certain kinship to cold bodies and
attaches itself to them. The well-known “flowers” of antimony produce
something in which the force of crystallisation as it were discharges
itself in contact with other bodies.
And the most remarkable of all antimonial properties, is its peculiar
form of resistance to all the forces which I have grouped together as
sub-terrestrial, in a certain sense; those forces that play through
electricity and magnetism. Suppose that we treat antimony with
electrolysis, bring it to the cathode, and touch the antimonial
deposit on the cathode with a metal point — the antimony produces
tiny explosions. This active resistance of antimony to electric
processes — if the substance is given a little stimulus — is most
characteristic and distinctive, revealing its real position in the
whole process of nature, no other substance reveals its interactions
so emphatically.
We can only interpret the lessons so graphically presented by that
substance, on the supposition that the forces present in nature are
working throughout, are in fact ubiquitous; and that if certain
substances show their operation to a marked degree, it is because the
forces are especially concentrated in those substances. What operates
in antimony is present throughout nature; the antimonising power — if
we may coin the term — is everywhere. It has also a regulative action
in man, so that in normal conditions human beings draw the antimonising
force from the extra-telluric sphere. That is to say, mankind draws
from the cosmos what in concentrated form is manifested as antimony.
In normal conditions man does not have recourse to the antimonising
force as present on earth and in its specific concentrated form, but
turns towards the external, extra-telluric antimonial force. So we
must obviously ask: What is the extra-telluric form of this
antimonising force?
Speaking in terms of the planets, it is the co-operation of Mercury,
Venus and the Moon. If these three do not operate separately but
together their action is not specifically of the nature of mercury,
copper or silver; but is comparable with the action of antimony in the
earth. And of course this can be and must be investigated, by
observing and registering the effects of such constellations upon man
— constellations, that is to say, in which the three forces of Moon,
Mercury and Venus neutralise each other, through the aspects of
opposition or square. If all three are in such an aspect of
neutralisation, there is the precise interaction which in the case of
antimony is laid hold of by the earth. In all the antimony in and on
the earth, the same force is exerted from our planet itself, as is
exerted by these three planetary bodies upon the earth.
Here it is necessary to warn against a mistake. The constitution the
earth is such as to make it erroneous to refer piecemeal, so to speak, to
such substances as antimony. All the antimony on the earth is a unity
in the earth's structure, just as all the earth's stores of silver or
of gold are unities. If you remove separate lumps of antimony from the
earth, you are simply extracting or amputating a part of that
antimonial body which is incorporated into the earth. We have now
attempted to delineate all the perceptible effect of antimonial
action: and here, as everywhere in nature, actions meet
counteractions. This oscillation between action and reaction, is just
what gives rise to bodily form.
Let us then look for those forces which act counter to the antimonial
forces. They reveal themselves if we are able to detect that the
antimonial forces act on man at the moment in which something presses
outwards which is regulated while within him. It is these antimonial
forces which are operative in the coagulation of the blood. Wherever
the consistency of the bloodstream shows a tendency to coagulate the
antimonising force is active. Wherever the blood tends to withdraw
from coagulation the counteracting forces are at work. So that
hæmophiliacs manifest the forces antagonistic to antimony curiously
enough. And these anti-antimonising forces are identical with those
for which I should like to coin the term “albuminising forces,” the
albumen forming forces, which work in such a health-giving way — that
they promote the formation of albumen. For, let us emphasise once
more: the forces that hinder coagulation are the albuminising forces.
Thus we arrive at some knowledge of the relationships between the
antimonising and albuminising forces in the human organism. In my
belief, careful study of the interplay of these two processes would
reap very important harvests of knowledge as regards disease and its
cure. For what are the processes which form albumen — the
albuminising processes? They are those by virtue of which all that is
plastic and formative in nature is incorporated into the human or the
animal organism, in order to supply its actual substance. And the
antimonising forces are those which, working from the outside, so to
speak, take the part of the artist, the sculptor, giving the substance
which builds the organs its form.
Thus the antimonial forces have a certain kinship to the internal
organising forces of the organs. Please take as a concrete example,
one organ, the alimentary canal. It is of course internally organised.
You are able to follow up its inner structure, without considering the
purpose it serves, or the manner in which food stuffs are carried
along it and worked upon. It is possible, that is to say, to separate
in the abstract the internal processes of the organ and those that
take place in working upon the substance introduced from outside. This
is an important separation, for the processes are indeed different. In
the organ itself, the antimonising force works in man. For man is
actually antimony, if we disregard all the ingredients brought into
him from the external world. Man himself is antimony. But the internal
organic formative force must not be overloaded with the antimonising
force in the normal course of life, for the effect would be
excessively stimulating, in fact a form of poisoning. But, if strong
stimulation is necessary, we may supply antimony to the organism —
which normally must not be supplied. The effect of antimony owing to these
peculiar properties, varies greatly according as it is applied from
within or without. If it is administered from within it is necessary
to dilute it so far as to make it absorbed by the upper bodily sphere
of man. If you are thus able to introduce antimony into the upper
sphere, it will have an amazing stimulant effect on disturbed organ
formations and internal organic processes. Thus very fine potencies of
antimony can be most useful in certain forms of typhus or typhoid.
In the other case the effect is somewhat different, and is achieved by
using lower potencies of antimony externally, in ointments, salves,
and so forth. There may be occasions when it is desirable to have
recourse to higher potencies in external application; but as a general
rule, external application will have their beneficial effect in lower
potencies.
This remedial substance is an extremely useful remedy in many
different directions. It is at work within the law of polarity just
referred to, yet shows constant slight oscillations. Thence arises a
rule that should not be disregarded. Antimony should be administered
internally by preference, in the treatment of individuals of very
strong will power, and externally by preference, in treating persons
of weaker will. Here is a first line of differentiation. Antimony
represents, within the mineral realm, a substance with an inner
kinship to the human will; that is to say, as the human will becomes
more conscious, it feels more inclined to call forth the
counter-effects to antimonial action. Human will has a destructive
effect on all the forces previously described, constituting the
characteristic operation of antimony. On the other hand, all that
builds up the human constitution under the influence of thought and
especially of unconscious thought — including the still unconscious
thought forces at work in the child — all these are supported by the
antimonial forces; antimony is, as it were, their ally. Thus if
antimony is introduced, by any route, into the human organism and is
thus able to exert its own properties, it forms a strong phantom
(scaffolding or network) within the body. The internal organic forces
are thus stimulated, and there is nothing left for co-operation with
the substances brought into the human organism. There follow fits of
vomiting and diarrhœa — showing that the effect is confined to the
organs, instead of including their surroundings. The same is true in
the counteracting process. You will be able to counter injurious
effects of antimony in yourself by the methods instinctively employed
by people when they want to keep their own circulatory and rhythmic
processes regular. They drink coffee, through which the rhythmic
processes are made even and harmonious. Please note that I am stating
a fact; I make no recommendation here, for it may be very harmful in
other ways, to relieve the ego of the task of
regulating these human rhythms. If man is not strong enough in his
soul to regulate his rhythmic processes, then coffee can bring about a
certain harmony. And so in cases of antimonial poisoning coffee acts
in some degree an antidote, restoring the rhythms between the working
of the inner organic forces and their surrounding. For there is a
regular interplay through rhythm. Indeed the real reason for drinking
coffee, is to establish a continuous regulation of rhythm between our
internal organs and what is happening in their vicinity to the
food-stuffs we have consumed.
From this point we are led to inquire into the albuminising processes.
These are reinforced — that is to say, all those processes are
reinforced that lie on the other side of the dividing line, where
there is no longer the inner organising force of the organs, but where
they unfold their external digestive activity. All the mechanical
processes of the movement of the intestines, and of the other
digestive activities, are closely interwoven with the albuminising
forces, which are virtually the formative forces of albumen, i.e., the
complementary polar opposites of the antimonising forces.
Now I must once more refer to something already dealt with. That is
the instructive object of study — or subject, if you like — the
shell formation of the oyster. To a somewhat less degree the same
occurs in the calcareous secretion in the egg. What is the key to
these phenomena? What precisely is an oyster shell and egg shell? It
is a product that the oyster or the essential substance of the egg
must eject, because were it retained it would kill them. This shell
formation is necessary for the preservation of life. And so, when
eating oysters, we consume that life process which is manifested
externally in the formation of the shells. (I put the facts to you in
these simple terms; if I sought to impress current science, more
intricate and technical terms would of course be necessary.) In eating
the oyster we eat this albuminising process, a process which is the
antithesis to the antimonising process. Through its absorption we
promote and stimulate all that leads in man to typhoid manifestations.
The consumption of oysters is an extraordinarily interesting
operation. It activates the formative force, that is the albuminising
force, within the human abdomen. This relieves the head, drawing
certain forces downwards, so that after eating oysters man feels much
less burdened by the forces which tend to work in his head. Oysters
empty the head, in a sense. And we have need of developing the
albuminising forces continually, for we cannot let our head
continually be charged with formative forces. But the habitual epicure
in oysters exaggerates this, and strives at all costs for an empty
head. By so doing, he increases the possibility of a downward eruption
of certain forces towards the abdomen, as I have already described,
that is to say he promotes the tendency in the lower organic sphere to
diarrhœa and typhoid. And as you will readily perceive, such a
condition demands antimonial treatment. There would be good results in
stimulating the forces to which appeal must be made, if the typhlitic
tendency is to be combated in its innermost stronghold, by
administration of antimony externally and internally at the same time;
especially rubbing with antimonial ointment and simultaneously taking
by the mouth antimony in high potency. These would be mutually
regulated and thus react beneficially on the typhlitic tendency.
Such are treatments that attempt to realise man within his whole
universal surroundings. The significance of such a method is shown if
you investigate man's relationships and reactions to such
manifestations in nature as arise from a certain defensive resistance
to the direct telluric forces. Plants are able to defend themselves
against these direct telluric forces; they store up much of their
formative power for their seasons of blossom and seed. Our most
frequent type of plant structure, of which most edible plants are
examples, is based on the employment of a definite amount of telluric
power for the formation of the plant itself. If, however, the plant
has a defensive attitude to these telluric forces, it becomes exposed
to the extra-telluric forces, when the final processes of
fructification and seed-formation ensue; and thus the plant becomes
something with an urge to contemplate the world from the same point of
vantage as the higher beings of the realms above the vegetable. The
plant shows an urge to perceive. But the plant has no specialised
structures for that purpose: it remains a plant, and yet it has the
urge to develop something analogous to the formation of the human eye.
But no eye can develop, in what is, after all, neither a human nor an
animal body but the body of a plant. And so the plant becomes a deadly
nightshade, Atropa Belladonna. I have tried to show by means of
pictures what takes place in the emergence of the fruit of belladonna.
That plant has already in its roots the force culminating in the
growth of its black berries, and with this it becomes akin to all that
urges in the human organism towards moulding the form and beyond. It
urges towards things only possible in the sensory sphere, lifting man
out of the world of his organisation into the sphere of the senses. A
process of extraordinary interest occurs, if small potentised
quantities of belladonna are administered. This is because it bears a
striking resemblance to the process of awakening from sleep which is
still interwoven with dreams. In such an awakening, interspersed with
dreams, the process is within the limits of normality. In awakening,
when perception has not yet begun but when sense perception is still
inwardly potentised to the permeation of the consciousness with
dreams, there is actually always a kind of deadly nightshade activity
in man. And belladonna poisoning consists in the provocation of this
same process that occurs when in awaking dreams still hold their sway;
but the process called forth in man by belladonna poison is made
lasting, not taken up into consciousness, but the transition phenomena
remain. This is the interesting point, that the processes which are
caused in man by toxic action, are of such a nature that at the right
tempo they are part of the whole human organisation.
As I have already described, the birth of the belladonna means a
frantic and excessive urge towards becoming man. And further it might
be said that the awakening from sleep in man has something of the
nature of an urge towards atropa belladonna: but an urge held in leash
and tuned down: confined to the moment of waking. Now suppose you wish
to relieve the body of the internal albuminising processes,
influencing the organism so that the too powerful albuminising is
retarded and the bodily event, so to speak, deflected towards the
soul, so that the bodily processes become hallucinations — then give
potentised doses of belladonna. Thus you will lift something into the
soul, something of which you wish to relieve the body. This is the
essence of what we meet in the usual macroscopic operation of
belladonna — although here again full of perplexities and illusions,
as I have already pointed out. Of course, if you give the human being
a shock that prevents the normal passage over from the state of
awakening to that of full waking consciousness, and makes permanent
the transitional state — well, you kill him. For man is always in
danger of death during that brief transition of awakening — but we
awake so rapidly that we escape that peril. Such are the interesting
inter-actions between what is accepted as normal, and is sound in
measure and tempo, and what becomes anti-normal as soon as it exceeds
that measure and tempo.
It seems to me that these were the processes that the physicians of
old time sought ever and again to pursue. If they spoke of the
creation of the Homunculus, they did so because their surviving
clairvoyant faculties revealed something resembling the phantom of
antimony. For there appeared to them, in the forming process which
they carried out in their laboratory when antimony unfolded its
forces, something projected into it by their own nature, which fights
against the power of antimony as albuminising force. That appeared to
them as a definite force. That which normally remains concealed within
the human organism, they projected externally, and thus they beheld
the Homunculus, who appeared during the various metamorphoses of
antimony. What appeared in the interplay of these processes and
metamorphoses they saw as the Homunculus.
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